The interactive Star Atlas lets you pan around and zoom into the 24 full-color maps originally published in Astronomy's Atlas of the Stars. These charts show you constellation stick figures and official boundaries, 1,000 deep-sky objects — such as star clusters, nebulae, and galaxies — and 45,000 stars down to magnitude 8.0.
The atlas divides the sky into five map sets: North Polar (Maps 1 through 3); North Equatorial (Maps 4 through 9); Equatorial Region (Maps 10 through 15); South Equatorial (Maps 16 through 21); and South Polar (Maps 22 through 24). Charts in each group progress in right ascension (the celestial equivalent of longitude), and adjoining maps overlap.
To access Star Atlas, you must be an Astronomy subscriber and have Adobe's Flash Player installed; you can download it here. The atlas will open in a new browser window. You can navigate the sky either by using the map index below or by clicking on the buttons bordering each chart.
